1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for execution of test procedures with respect to an electronic exchange and a system for the same, more particularly relates to a method of creation of a test procedure document for an electronic exchange, execution of a test by the test procedure document, and management of the state of test progress and a system for the same.
In an automatic test of an electronic exchange, the electronic exchange is tested by creating a test procedure document (test command file) described by a language of a format which the test equipment of the electronic exchange can accept as well as a test procedure document describing the test procedure by ordinary sentences, giving the commands of the test procedure document (test command file) to the test equipment of the electronic exchange, and making it execute the commands.
After making the test equipment of the electronic exchange execute the commands of the test procedure document (test command file) to make the electronic exchange perform the test operation, the data of the results of the execution of the test operation and the correct answer data at the time of a normal operation created in advance are compared and a judgement of the test results is carried out. Further, when performing the comparison, a mask is appropriately applied to the data not influencing the judgement of the test results obtained by the test operation of the electronic exchange. The mask is only opened at the positions at which the above comparison must match at the least. The test results are checked and judged by examining the match at the above opened positions from the mask.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the automatic test of an electronic exchange of the related art, the test procedure document (test command file) is described by special commands unique to the test equipment of the electronic exchange, therefore unless one is a skilled person well versed in the above special commands, it is difficult to create the test procedure document. Therefore, a test operator carries out the maintenance and inspection by using the test procedure document created by a skilled person to test the electronic exchange.
Thus, the creator of the test procedure document and the test operator are different, and therefore the test operator spends much time and effort for understanding the content of the test procedure document. Further, mistakes or errors, existing in the created test procedure document, are often found when actually testing the electronic exchange. The test is therefore often interrupted due to such mistakes or errors contained in the test procedure document. This becomes sometimes an obstacle to the progress of predetermined test items. Further, at this time, there is a problem in that much effort is required for understanding the correspondence between the test command file and the written test procedure document.
Further, the written test procedure document describes the method of confirmation of the test results, but the test command file does not describe the method of confirmation of the test results. Furthermore, there are cases in which the method of judgement of the test results differs depending on the created test command file, and therefore the results must be judged by different types of judgement methods. In such a case, there is a problem that a detailed method of judgement cannot be designated for every test command file.
Further, the test results after executing the automatic test procedure were merely stored in a data base comprised of only the data of the test results. For this reason, the test procedure document, test results, and the test execution history file were separately managed and it was extremely difficult to achieve a check by comparing the correspondence among them.